The Freezing
by rinda.fullmoon
Summary: "All lives end, all hearts are broken..." How did Mycroft come to be the Ice Man? What old scores did he and Sherlock never settle? Why does a man who refuses to care, worry constantly about Sherlock Holmes? This is Mycroft's story.
1. The Avalanche

**Hi- this is my first go at a multi-chapter fic! I am hoping to study Mycroft's character through scenes (possibly) in his past, and also with key events in seasons 1 & 2. So, this might seem a little odd, not being in strict chronological order (just a heads up :) ). I hope I can make it clear what time frame it is set in, but I will leave a note if it's potentially ambiguous!**

**The kidlock chapters may be slightly AU, but hey, artistic license OK?  
**

**Disclaimer: all characters belong to AC Doyle & the moff (BBC), I (will have) lifted some of the dialogue from scenes in the series, no copyright infringement intended :)  
**

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To Mycroft Holmes, his father was God. In his impressionable, limited (remarkable though it was), 7-year-old mind, there was only one ruler. One man who seemed to be able to control the whole world with the tilt of his head or a flick of his finger. His estimations of the man were not very far off either. Power, prestige, knowledge: Mr Holmes very nearly had it all. Mycroft liked to watch him at work sometimes, hidden away in a cranny of his office where nobody could disturb his private awe. Men and women came and went from that room, all well-dressed and larger than life. Most, if not all, had hard eyes that seemed to drill right through you, speaking of rigid authority. But none had eyes with quite the same intensity as Mycroft's father. Cold and blue and hard as diamonds, they drilled through the rock of those who met them, bending them like reeds to his will. To Mycroft there seemed no finer art than this manipulation, as an observer, he absorbed the elegance and subtleties of it, spiced with the delicious rush of power. Although he could not fully comprehend his father's role, there was no doubt in his mind that he wanted to emulate it, someday.

His obscure hiding place was only discovered once.

The meeting that night seemed to stand out clearer in his memories than any other. A full moon glowed eerily among the wispy clouds. The office was half frozen in the chill of winter; Mycroft had to curl in a tight ball to escape the cold that gnawed at his toes. The man was small, but his face was like stone and his eyes blazed in anger like fireballs. He marched into the room like a bull terrier. Short, but deadly.

"You will be stopped, Holmes, I will not let you get away with this Thompson affair," the small man spat like the Devil, size no matter to his menace.

"I think you'll find, Chandler, that you most certainly will," Mr Holmes almost whispered, his voice smooth like a serpent, venom lacing every word, "life is short, is it not? Why waste … the time you have left… troubling me?" Fire met ice in a fizzling, bubbling collision that almost made Mycroft recoil.

The implication was not lost on the small man. Chandler gave an almost imperceptible start, narrowing those blazing eyes. "Death does not frighten me, your threats are nothing, hear that? Nothing!"

Mr Holmes laughed at this, a rich, ominous rumbling like an impending avalanche that echoed around the icy office. A wide-eyed Mycroft frantically tried to sort this new piece of information. Death. An ending to all things. To him it only happened in stories, never in real life. It was nothing to fear, in reality. But now real fear was now writing its cold, hard self in the stark lines on Chandler's face, belying his adamant suggestions. Death was real, at least to this man. Mycroft gave a tiny gasp, barely audible, as he watched the small man crumble. But it was enough noise to evoke a faint twitch in his father's expression. He had been sprung.

"Think carefully, Chandler, I will contact you in the morning," said his father in tones ringing of finality.

The door shut with a resounding snap and Mr Holmes whirled around, marching straight to Mycroft's hiding place. Mortified, and feeling so terribly exposed, the boy gazed up at the figure bearing down on him. No words were said, but the look was enough to chill Mycroft's heart, freezing his limbs where he sat, scrunched into a tiny ball. He began to stammer at his father, desperately searching for some kind of way to explain, but it seemed as if his brain was frozen. Frustration at himself curled his toes, until finally he said the first thing that came into his head. He blurted, in that brutally honest way that children have, as if he could somehow break the ice-cold silence with his little voice.

"Th-That man, thought you were going to kill him. He was afraid. But you didn't care."

It wasn't a question.

Mr Holmes' face did not soften, exactly, but the cold daggers pinning Mycroft in place seemed to loosen their grip by the smallest amount. Crouching down in front of his son, the man glared into his face, testing, calculating. Mycroft felt as if he were some specimen, being dissected under a microscope. It was like his father had his young soul, open like a book, and was reading every part of who he was. It was the first time since his unremembered infancy that Mycroft could remember his father looking at him, really seeing him. Cold, blue steel met young, shiny orbs. _Like an uncut gem. Unrefined, but with potential, oh so much potential. _

"All lives end," Mr Holmes said softly, and suddenly, "all hearts are broken. Caring… is not an advantage."

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**Please review! I am open to all opinions, and would love suggestions on how to improve! x**


	2. The Glacier

**^^ okay, so this is supposed to be set a little while before sherlock met john :P**

**once again, please r& r! I really value your opinion :)  
**

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Mycroft steepled his fingers underneath his chin as he carefully observed the man across the desk from him. It appeared that they had reached an impasse, of sorts. Annoyance flickered at the edges of Mycroft's consciousness as his mind worked at the chinks in the man's armour. _Chronic nail-biter_, he thought as he stared the other man down, _meets my eye, as he is no doubt trained to do, but he keeps adjusting his tie- he's nervous. Well dressed, in a dark grey suit- wants to seem immovable, like a rock. He'll need to look that way, at least, if he's to stay in power. As for actually being immovable? Well, we'll see about that won't we? A rock won't move if you hit it, and I don't want to break this one, just yet. But water, on the other hand…._

"Prime Minister," he said amicably, straightening in his chair, "Would you like a cup of tea?" He gave the man a tiny smile, aiming to set him at ease without appearing unbusinesslike. It would not do to give him the wrong impression. Mycroft's word was law, only that those who executed it seldom realised it. He wanted things to remain that way.

"Oh why not," said the Minister with a sigh, "white, no sugar, if you don't mind."

The ensuing silence was only broken by the soft chinks of the crockery as Mycroft prepared the beverages and returned to the desk. He preferred his black. Strong and bitter with nothing to soften the flavour. Politics was like that. Every hard line behind the scenes had to be delivered strongly, and without frills. That much he had learned from his father.

The Prime Minister did not break eye contact as they both drank, unspeaking. The man had been obstinate throughout the entire meeting, and it took all Mycroft's manipulative power to get him to budge an inch. If this was to be a battle of wills, so be it. Placing his cup ever so delicately on the table, Mycroft took up his sword once more. "You cannot withdraw the Secret Service from Iran," he said abruptly, "the implications of such a drastic action are obviously beyond your understanding. Allowing it would constitute my failing the British Nation, so naturally I will not be backing down on the issue."

The Prime Minister glared at him, rock-like once more. "Who are you to deny me? What makes you think you have the authority to stand against the might of the people?"

_Softer,_ Mycroft berated himself, _appeal to his trust._

He smiled in spite of himself, the man was like a dog, one must gently show him in the right direction. "Oh, I have many fingers in many pies, Minister, and I have done so for a very long time. Behind the scenes I have all but kept this nation running since I started my career." He leaned back in his chair now, almost lounging, staring down his nose at one of the most powerful men in England. "So, if you know what's good for you, you will listen to, and consider very carefully, every word of advice that passes my lips."

The other man stared into his cup of tea and sighed. He was silent for a moment. "You certainly have made yourself clear on this, haven't you?"

Mycroft inclined his head, ever so slightly.

"Well I suppose I'll just have to trust you, won't I?" The man had bent his sorry spine, at last.

Mycroft smiled. It was almost genuine. "Thank you, I promise you will not regret it."

"Well then," the Prime Minister stood, "I take it we are finished here?"

Mycroft rose to join him, and shook his hand cordially across the desk. "I trust I will be seeing you soon, Minister." The other man just managed a wry smile, still half-glowering, before striding to the door and closing it neatly behind him.

Mycroft sank back into his chair, the warm glow of victory spreading through him like the tea he had just drunk. It was always like this, the delicious rush of power, swirling through his head, singing like a golden chord. Like his brother, he needed something to relieve the tedium. Somethign to 'get off on'. This was it, and it had always been so, from those first evenings curled in that cold office. He was addicted to it, as much as any substance.

He remembered it now, remembered his father. The similarities between them were striking, in hindsight. Both were cold and hard and unfeeling, icy and unmoving. They both had risen to drive a nation from the back seat, using nothing but their own mighty brainpower to do so. Both had minds that could see right through the barriers people erected around themselves. To tear them apart and read their insides like a book. Mycroft had become what he had always wanted. He had become the god that he had set his father up to be.

But there were differences too, Mycroft realised. They were not all the same. His father had been like an avalanche, rushing up to meet any opposition and mowing it down if it stood in his way, regardless of size or clout. It was impossible to stand against the icy roar and escape with your life. Unless, of course, you were a mountain. Powerful as an avalanche was, it was far from subtle and much too short lived, in his opinion. Mycroft liked to think himself more like a glacier; just as cold, treacherous and unforgiving, but slower, and more far more patient. Content to sit on his heels and slowly, surely grind down the mountains into an object of his making.

_Why?_ He wondered, not for the first time. _Why did I turn out differently to him?_ The answer popped into his head, unbidden, like an itch that refused to go away, however he tried to shove it out of his mind. He wished he hadn't asked himself. But, insistently, it wormed its way into his thoughts until it was practically screaming at him. _You control the world like a mother controlling her child_.

His brother's face swam before his eyes.

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**hopefully I will update soon, but I am about to go into exams... and I have a feeling that the next chapter is going to be a tad tricky, wish me luck ! ~**


	3. The Mother

**Phew... interesting (aka hard) chapter to write  
Back to kidlock again ^^  
Inspired by the quotation from ASiB below :)  
A tiny bit of dialogue lifted from _Peter Pan_ by JM Barrie  
**

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_MH- I'll be "mother"_

_SH- And there is a whole childhood in a nutshell_

_- A Scandal In Belgravia_

* * *

Sherlock was barely walking when it happened.

It was a bright, clean summer's day. The kind of glorious morning that only shines down on a few special days in the year. Mycroft lay stretched out under a gnarled old oak tree, a book nestled against his chest as a soft breeze running gentle fingers through his hair. It was probably the most loving touch that he had never known. He sighed and flipped the page, drinking in the clean air that tingled smoothly on his tongue. Glancing up, he saw an anonymous silver car begin to crunch its way up the drive. His mind dismissed it almost immediately. People were constantly coming and going to see his father. Except today Mr Holmes was out, presumably attending to something of national importance, so his mother would be left to deal with whoever it was. She would probably send them away with a smile, and tell them to kindly call at a later date. They wouldn't argue with her.

That was why, when her scream came, ringing crisply through the summer air, he jumped violently at the wholly unexpected sound. Like a knife, laden with pain and shock, it pierced at the frosty layer that was already beginning to grow around his heart. Suddenly, the summery day dissolved around him as he tossed his book down and bolted to the house. Wrenching open the front door, he tore down hallway after hallway, heart in his throat, freezing the inside of his mouth. Mummy was placid and undramatic by nature. He had never once heard her shout. Only something terrible and unknown could have ripped that awful sound from her lips. The thought chilled him beyond the flesh. Finally, panting, he reached her study. The door was ever so slightly ajar, a golden finger of light reaching out over the carpet, calling him closer. Inside, he could hear his mother sobbing. Gasping, pained breaths that spoke of incredible sorrow. Mycroft's face darkened with worry. Peering through the crack he glimpsed a tall, burly man, dressed in a hard, shiny suit, staring down at her. He spoke softly and clearly in a deep baritone.

"…would not have felt any pain. It was over very quickly. When you have a truck that large hitting a car like that, these things are very fast. You have my deepest sympathy..."

The boy's heart dropped from his throat to somewhere in the region of his stomach, where it solidified into a cold, hard ball. The sensation made him faintly nauseous. It was as if his entire world had been torn down like an old house, left to lie in a pitiful ruin. He had nowhere to run.

* * *

Mycroft never quite understood why Mummy took him to the morgue with her. Perhaps she just could not face the identification alone, and any familiar presence, no matter how insignificant, would allow her to live through it. Nevertheless, he went, riding with her through the endless waves of grief and tears that flooded the sinister, black taxi.

The chill of the harsh, rectangular room mirrored that in his heart as the mortician led them to the impassive slab. The smell of formalin lingered, stinging his nostrils as the sharp, clinical corners of the room stabbed at his eyes. His head began to throb. The pathologist unzipped the body bag disinterestedly, as if she were opening an old suitcase that needed to be unpacked of its dirty laundry. Mycroft was barely tall enough to peer expectantly over the top of the bench, but what he saw would never leave him.

The wound in his father's head could never have been sustained in a car accident. The hole was far to round, and far too neat; a tidy pucker of brightest red, painted cleanly between his eyes. He frowned, a narrow crevasse creasing his young forehead, sharp mind working frantically. That unspeakable word came to his thoughts almost instantly: _assassin_. The shock of the revelation was muted only by the fact that the worst news had already been delivered. Young as he was, Mycroft was already busily piecing together the fragments of the puzzle, trying to construct reason from the madness churning around him. He had known for certain since that winter night that his father had enemies, but only now was he seeing what real enemies could do. It almost frightened him.

It took his mother much longer to comprehend the reality. For several minutes, she just stared. Then Mycroft watched as her already broken face slowly crumbled, and she gasped his father's name. The sobs racked her slight body. Like a tiny wisp of a feather underfoot, she had been crushed. She could barely stand.

He looked up at the mortician, forcing himself to maintain eye contact. "That's him," he said, almost calmly, fighting ruthlessly to keep the quaver out of his voice.

The mortician nodded and deftly closed the bag.

His mother was stricken. She leaned heavily on the edge of the slab, face blotchy with pain, rocking backward and forward, now howling his father's name. Mildly embarrassed, but full of pity, he took Mummy's shaking hand in his small white one, and led her gently out of the morgue.

He wondered at her sudden incapacitation. His mother had always struck him as a capable sort of person, but now she was a flattened heap of flesh and tears. _Why would she just collapse like that?_ _Everybody dies, someday. Even Father._ Unexpectedly, as if his ghost was summoned by the thought, his father's words on that frozen night returned to him.

_All lives end._

_All hearts are broken. Caring is not an advantage_. His mother cared, he realised. Cared like no-one else he knew. She had been the pale finger of warmth to his father's ice, softening their family to some degree of normalcy. The single nurturing presence. Such a depth of feeling, it had left her a hollow, ruin of a woman. In the end, it was as debilitating as any infirmity.

No, he decided, as the meaning of the words finally struck home, caring was not an advantage.

* * *

Mummy never really did recover. Instead, as the sobs and wails subsided, she retreated inside her own private bubble of grief, oblivious to the tides of life that still swirled around her. Eventually, she continued to go about day-to-day tasks, except with none of the swift, calm efficiency that she had once possessed. She had never been overly affectionate towards her children, but in the months after her husband's death it was as if they were nothing but ghosts to her.

Sherlock was the one who suffered this the most. Mycroft, after all, was learning not to care. The younger Holmes, in his mother's absence, took to following his older brother around. At first Mycroft found this immensely irritating. Not in the least because Sherlock _always_ seemed to be able to locate him, even in his most secluded hiding places. He would crawl into whatever nook or cranny Mycroft had chosen and sit calmly beside him, with an expression of intolerable smugness written all over his round face. Despite being not able to read, he seemed to find some odd entertainment in looking over Mycroft's shoulder at the page, or sometimes staring off into the distance, lost in his own thoughts. No matter how often, or by how many different methods Mycroft told him to stop, Sherlock refused to desist. He began to think that the small boy was doing it just to spite him. He probably thought it was some kind of game.

So Mycroft stopped playing. He vacated his hidey-holes for the open slather of the sitting room. Here, at least, his location was predictable and the hunt was no longer entertaining. Sure enough, Sherlock began to stop pestering him. Mycroft had no idea what was now occupying his time, but again, he was learning not to care. However, the younger boy still visited him, on occasion. He would join him on the sofa and watch with puzzled eyes as he devoured book after book. It was still annoying, but at least it was not as constant as before.

It was on one of these occasions, when the elder of the two had just finished _Great Expectations_ and was contemplating the odious chore of seeking out new reading material. He stood solemnly at the bookshelf with his back to Sherlock, who was curled up on the sofa like a cat, eyes darting around the room in one of the fits of boredom that had just begun to plague him. He was never quite sure what made him do it, but when he returned to his seat, he was clutching a book that he had already read a dozen times, a book which far from interested him. It was _Peter Pan_. The shock emanating from Sherlock when he handed it to him was almost palpable, but he took the volume with a tiny smile. Settling himself beside him, Mycroft instructed him to open it.

"_All children, except one, grow up…" _Slowly, almost awkwardly at first, he began to read aloud to his brother, carefully pointing out the letters so that he might begin to recognise the odd patterns, squiggling across the page. The younger boy's bright eyes followed his finger hungrily, his ears drinking in the sound of his voice, as together they voyaged in a land of pirates and fairies and never growing old. By the time they turned the final page, it was not Mycroft, but Sherlock who was reading.

"…_and thus it will go on, so long as children are gay and innocent and heartless._" His little brother snapped the covers shut and looked up at him, blue eyes bright with the excitement of having mastered something new. Mycroft felt an odd, warm feeling tugging at his heart as he gazed down at Sherlock, a smile teasing the corners of his mouth. For once, his frozen shell of loneliness had been broken apart. Later, he was shocked to remember that the feeling was pride. His icy conscience quickly sought to reject the notion. But surely, such sharpness of mind gave cause for it? Pride at his unique and remarkable brother, who, like himself, could piece everything together so astonishingly quickly. Yes, he was allowed to be proud. Staring up at him, Sherlock's face was an image of adoration, the strength of which sent a rush of power straight to Mycroft's head and left his mind reeling with the possibilities.

Here, at last, was something that he could control in a world that had been torn asunder.

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**Realised late in the piece that it is a little bit Hunger Games inspired... oh well** **:P**  
**I hope you enjoyed- please r&r!**  
**Look out for the next chapter, we will return to 'modern' Mycroft**


	4. The Doctor

**This one is quite short and sweet :)**

**Apologies for how long it has taken~!**

******As always, reviews are greatly appreciated x**

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John Watson, M.D. Ex-Army. Afghanistan. Invalided. Suspected PTSD. Estranged sister.

This much Mycroft Holmes knew by the time John was seen shaking hands with Sherlock on the street outside 221B, the wan London sun softly scrutinising their every move.

He sat, almost uncomfortably upright, in his least-favourite armchair at the Diogenes Club, frowning solidly down at the file in his lap. His face could have been made of stone. Methodically, he began to swirl the last, melancholy dregs of tea, before draining the china cup with an indifferent elegance. Slowly and deliberately, he mulled silently over the intangible, human puzzle that was John Watson.

At first glance, he seemed to be practically ordinary. Well, as ordinary as a traumatised soldier could be. So then what was he doing looking to Sherlock Holmes, of all people, for a flatmate? Normal people just didn't do Sherlock. Well, once they had spent anything more than a cursory length of time in the same room as him. Mycroft smirked. The plain little man obviously did not have a clue about what his brother was like. Well, he would soon find out, wouldn't he? Rising from the chair, Mycroft set about putting the matter out of his mind. He would have put money on Dr Watson being out of Baker Street before the end of the week.

* * *

But then he went to the crime scene.

Sherlock worked alone, always. It was almost self-explanatory: he couldn't stand anybody, and nobody could stand him. Yes, better off alone, that was Sherlock to a letter.

So Mycroft never saw it coming.

He almost didn't look up as his phone chimed its frigid, factory-setting text alert. But one glance at the message made him sit forward in his seat.

_SH at Jennifer Wilson scene w John W._

Mycroft would have gasped. Only Mycroft Holmes never gasps, ever. Instead, his eyes widened infinitesimally and his lips narrowed into a tight pucker. Here was his extraordinary, talented, narcissistic brother, inviting the short, blond soldier with the lumpy knitted sweater to join him in the Work: the only thing Sherlock had ever come to care about. The only thing, in his view, worth living for. To the untrained eye, the action might have almost escaped comment. But to Mycroft, who had known Sherlock the longest, the ordinary gesture made him start. It was completely ordinary, and that was the problem. Sherlock didn't do ordinary. Predictably abnormal, Mycroft thought the sun would freeze before he went so far as to describe anything Sherlock did as conventional.

But, by far Mycroft's biggest concern was how easily he had gotten it wrong. Almost-ordinary Watson had quite effortlessly upended all of Mycroft's careful estimations. Was he losing his touch? Had a desk job softened his mind? Explanations and excuses flitted through his head, each more unlikely than the one before. How had a _soldier_ fooled him so easily? Small worry upon small worry began to gnaw an irritated hole at the back of his mind.

He bounced his phone in his hand for a moment, staring at his knees and weighing up his options, the great silver scales in his mind working smoothly and with a regal ease. If the doctor was going to stick around, as he certainly seemed to be, then he might as well make him useful.

He looked down at his phone once more and started to dial.

* * *

He had set that gloomy scene oh so carefully. Abandoned parking lot. Lone chair. His most sinister black umbrella.

And John Watson had turned up his ordinary little round nose at all of it. Even the bribes.

Mycroft was livid.

And yet, as he slid silently into the back seat of the gently humming vehicle, face unreadable, a small part of him could not help wondering if a little bit of ordinary might just be exactly what his brother needed.


End file.
